Support Early Career Researchers

A major priority of the Coalition in recent years has been bolstering federal policies to support early career researchers focusing their careers in pediatrics, including both physician-scientists and non-physician scientists. The Coalition’s deep commitment to this issue recognizes the continued challenges associated with recruiting and retaining researchers to the field, particularly those researchers from populations that have historically been under-represented in the field. Simply put, without adequate numbers of researchers entering the field and staying in it, our ability to achieve future research breakthroughs will be limited.

The Coalition has addressed this topic by supporting federal legislation to strengthen how NIH supports early-career pediatric researchers as well as engaging with leaders at NIH directly on this topic. More on current federal policy actions can be found here.

In addition to advocacy activity, the Coalition has been working with peer stakeholders to raise awareness and advance ideas to address this need outside of federal public policy, In 2022, the Coalition partnered with the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to execute a two-part event consisting of a virtual meeting and a subsequent in-person session to identify policy priorities. The convening produced a priorities document and also led to further discussion and exchange of ideas for all stakeholders, governmental and non-governmental, to consider.

The Coalition looks forward to continuing to be a leader in pursuing innovation approaches to addressing the needs in this most important topic.